Comments

BTW, what are the libel/slander laws like in Oz. It might be hard to sue in the USA since Dr. Garnaut might count as a public figure there and I vaguely remember hearing that it is much harder for a ‘public figure’ to sue for libel or slander

@Kate: you haven’t spent enough time on the INTERNET. The latest trend is that Nazis are from the left-wing, because there is socialist in their name … so, they are, you see, the same thing as communists. All liberals in the end (actual and factual differences are unimportant details you shouldn’t bother yourself with)!

Andrew Bolt has recently been mining the same theme by comparing Greens to Nazis and promoting a book he claims he’s about to start reading.

When criticised he demanded his critics “read the evidence”. Odd, because at the time he had yet to.

Unfortunately the slow slide of political and scientific discourse continues, whereby it is perfectly acceptable to send death threats to scientists and compare economists to Nazis (Bolt, to his credit, didn’t compare Garnaut to the Nazis, but rather to Lenin).

I hope this image is splashed around the media when Tony Abbott meets Monckton on his Australia visit.

It’s not just Andrew Bolt, either. I’ve seen a number of sites where “environmentalism” (I’m not clear exactly what this means in this context) is explicitly claimed to have been invented by Goebbels and his pals. This is a worrying trend because it feeds directly into the Teabaggers’ need for someone to react against.

For example
(cached version to avoid giving them additional pageviews…). Please check your sanity before reading.

Jeez… And Anthony Watts has a kiniption fit anytime someone calls him a “denier.”

You know, this is actually probably good news. Remember how Glenn Beck had to keep getting more and more outrageous in order to maintain interest from his viewers? …to the point where the extremism of his position began to wear on his core audience?

I think Monckton has hit his wall the same as Beck. The size of the audience that buys into that kind of rhetoric is tiny.

I’m trying to cause trouble for AMEC from one angle, but it occurs to me – does anybody here feel confident they can get the Jewish Board of Deputies to do something with this? This is exactly the sort of thing they tend to speak out about, and when they release press statements they tend to get noticed by the media.

Monckton is no stranger to Godwin – remember the “nazi youth” comments he hurled at young activists at Copenhagen.
Like any other comment this character puts forth; it’s all little more than hysterical misinformation to reinforce old-world ideologies (for the age of oil dependence is closing).

Of course, the real Nazis were also an angry ultra-conservative populist movement – in collaboration with an industrial elite – that cast itself as merely reacting to defend Decent People from the ‘obvious’ looming Tyranny of the Communists and Jewish Bankers.

They’re not called ‘reactionaries’ for nothing.

I wouldn’t be too sure that this is all funny, or that just because this is outrageously stupid that it will be automatically identified as such. Godwin’s Law is not a fact, as such.

Fascism was, in many ways, the institutionalisation of many things little men ‘just know’ to be true – ‘my country is superior’ ‘other races are inferior’ ‘we are being persecuted by minorities’ ‘intellectuals are traitors’ ‘conspiracies are everywhere’. Many a little man – and woman – still ‘knows’ exactly the same things, and guess where they generally stand in this debate?! Scare them enough and they can be led to some ugly places…

All this ‘they’re conspiring against us’ stuff is clearly projection, just as it was the first time around… and many who are seeing the menace of Hitler in others cannot perceive the insidious tinge of brown in their own shirts! Precisely because they’re ‘obviously’ good people reacting to the evil in others.

We’re nowhere near assembling any floodlights in the Nuremberg plaza, of course. But when elements in the so-called conservative parties start playing to the rabble over an issue as serious as death-threats being issued to scientists I, for one, don’t think it’s all that funny…

“And Anthony Watts has a kiniption fit anytime someone calls him a “denier.””

Yeah, but, you see, “denier” can _only_ mean that we’re comparing them to Nazis, whereas using swastikas and the word “Hitler” is really just generic language that is used to describe people that are doing things that one doesn’t really agree with

By that reasoning Michael Hauber @31, education is a government action therefore anyone sending their children to a government school is a Nazi, roads are funded by the government therefore rod users are Nazis.

I find it is interesting that when you get right down to it, Monckton believes that Global Warming is a Nazi conspiracy by Jewish Bankers. I bet it would be very easy to get him to admit this publicly by the right sort of questions.

>…Monckton believes that Global Warming is a Nazi conspiracy by Jewish Bankers.

I too immediately wondered about this when I saw Monckton’s presentation and its hideous backdrop. I’m curious to know if Garnaut is Jewish, because if so it puts Monckton – and Abbott, and many other people and organisations – in a very sticky situation…

Monckton has got to be a deep-cover green operative. There can be no other plausible explanation. Surely everyone, other than the most unhinged, will look at that slide, and think ‘these guys are deranged’.

Wow. You guys don’t get the point. So one of his points about how the warmies will not even consider skeptics to be human, so then you claim that he has no facts. I did not see this presentation, but most of his presentations are packed full of facts (and not those hypothetical computer simulation facts). Of course, this slide shown here goes over the top with the swastika, but I think that this board proves his point.

Consistency isn’t needed; the point is to construct a set of stories, so you have ready-made pitches to aim at particular subgroups – e.g. to the neocons.

See: Avi Davis, American Freedom Alliance, Green Hell, with Monckton & Milloy (link).
(This is really, really sad – I hate to stereotype but if any group oughta have the smarts to see through a ploy like this and the values to reject it…)

‘Facts’ don’t count when you pull them out of your posterior like Monckton does. He’s a pathological liar; I mean that literally. From his lies about being a member of the House of Lords to his preposterous claim he was a Thatcher science advisor, to his serial distortions of what actual scientists have said, he has shown himself to be incapable of honesty. And yet, so many so-called ‘skeptics’ eat up his crap.

“”We don’t need to weaken our position on our interpretations of the data uncertainty and the science problems by committing rhetorical suicide.”

…

“However, putting swastikas in planned public powerpoint presentations, and linking that by name to a person, is in my opinion, way over the top and in very bad form and totally hijacks and negates the important messages elsewhere in the presentation.”

> “The outsider to climate science has no rational choice but to accept that, on the balance of probabilities, the mainstream science is right in pointing to high risks from unmitigated climate change”

It is the staggering number of truly ignorant, ideological, and/or outright delusional people peppering the Australian lay public, that is hamstringing our country’s participation in efforts to mitigate human-caused climate change.

There are regions in our society where the density of bogons is so great that it bends the light of objective understanding, and curves space-time so much that any approaching scientific fact is either catapulted away forever, or crushed forever into a black hole of ideological ignorance.

At some point in the past Blot’s blog manifested its own event horizon, and now we risk the whole of Australia being drawn into the singularity of Stupid.

That singularity of Stupid will eventually evaporate away via a variant of Hawking radiation known as Dunning-Kruger radiation – but probably not before the warming of the Earth does the job first…

It’s, interesting this whole ‘the Nazis were leftists’ thing. There really is nothing so absurd that some bunch of doofuses somewhere won’t choose to believe it!

Not only was Hitler a socialist (because, you know, National Socialist and all that – in which case East Germany was clearly a democracy) but for the US wing-nut right (e.g. 1′ 23″) Pastor Niemöller famous letter now begins –

First they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.

Rather than, uh, ‘the communists’. It went communists, trade unionists, then Jews in the original, and some versions throw in social democrats (which doesn’t make sense because aren’t they just communists? ) and the incurably ill, but at any rate this way quoting the most famous first line involves somewhat less strain for those trying to pull off this particular feat of mental gymnastics!

Thanks for the link; Turnbull’s so good I’m going to have to quote him –

Monckton is a vaudeville artist. He has no credibility, politically or scientifically, particularly in The United Kingdom and he is a professional sensationalist. So he says these outrageous things in order to get into the press.

Sadly, much of the mining industry in this country serves as an exemplar of the kind of dysfunctional elite thinking that always leads to collapse. If their members actually lobbied for this guy then there’s not a lot more to say! ‘Sustainability and environmental responsibility’ my arse…

I love that Turnbull, who basically lost the opposition leadership to climate denialism within the party, sees the chance to get in a few swift kicks.
They should approach Nick Minchin for comment on this sort of stuff at every opportunity.

..He (Monckton) has no credibility, politically or scientifically, particularly in The United Kingdom..

I could add to this that Monckton is practically unknown in the UK – most people have NEVER heard of him. Even amongst UK “sceptic” bloggers he is rarely mentioned. He seems to have built his reputation overseas by massively exaggerating his importance within the Thatcher administration (he couldn’t get away with that in the UK) and by using his title to falsely associate himself with the UK House of Lords. Lords are ten a penny here.

Of Bolt rejects Monckton. Pictures say a thousand words and most Australians abhor this kind of extremist discourse. it’s a massive turn off.

Bolt is smart enough to realise that, as one of Australia’s most influential deniers, the Monckton image can do a lot of damage to his reputation very quickly unless he acts. If there’s one thing you don’t want to be associated with it’s some fringe nut parading around with swastikas.

However I note from the comments that a number of his readers are confused. After all, they opine, hasn’t Bolt been telling them similar things all along? As a result most of the readers agree with and support Monckton. Que sara sara, Bolta.

>In his article, Lord Monckton said the cost of carbon reduction schemes ”exceeds that of the imagined [and largely imaginary] damage from unmitigated warming”. ”The Planet was triumphantly Saved 2000 years ago by a carpenter’s son from Galilee. It does not need Saving again,” he writes.

Could he be one of those who thinks God would never let global warming happen?

It’s the gusto with which the denialists embrace ignorance that’s so surprising. The climate doesn’t respond to spin or rhetorical tricks. It’s just going to continue to degrade. Weather tragedies like this spring’s and like last year’s droughts and floods are going to become commonplace and worse. All so the extravagantly rich can get ever more extravagantly rich.

It’s like Walter in The Big Lebowski groaning about nihilists. “Say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, but at least it was an ethos.” Somehow I can’t see insuring the Koch brothers next billion dollars arising to the level of an ethos.

John, I don’t know. I’ve given up trying to find any consistent underpinnings for the beliefs of any prominent inactivists, other than “mihi da potestatem omnes librvles delere“. And actually I’m not sure that trying to find such an underpinning is even a useful exercise anymore, if it ever was.

Well, if Monckton wants to go ahead with his talk, more power to him! Let the whole world see him as the wacko he is.

Re. SourceWatch on American Freedom Alliance, paraphrasing that 2011 June ‘Green Hell’ statement:

“What the Greens really seek…is to dictate the very parameters of your daily life… how much you can have, and even how many children you can eat.”

That list of attendees is as expected including James ‘the interpreter of interpretations’ Delingpole, who I suspect will declare himself, ‘so happy to be at home with like minds’ (as at Heartland) and Benny ‘the GWPF tool’ Peiser. At last the BBC seem to have stopped using him as the sceptic balance in reports on climate change.

Interesting mention of yet another tax exempt and non-profit organisation a publisher Encounter Books (also supported by the Kochs and other high profile think tank shakers). Is it not time some of these came under a fiscal microscope? As should that Temple of the Air (how ironic) for which Melanie Phillips has been a spokesperson, surprise, surprise:

Now as for Monckton being thrown under the bus by Watts, does this not raise questions about SPPI which Monckton uses as grey publishing support? I thought Watts was involved with SPPI along with Joe D’Aleo.

John@69: No, I doubt that Monckton is a more than a noblesse oblige Anglican*, but his last remaining constituency, the US Lunar Right, are, so he will craft his honeyed words accordingly.
* I presume he’s not one of the dissident Catholic peerage, since his grandfather obtained the hereditary peerage that Monckton now flaunts for services rendered regarding the abdication of Edward V111 to marry a divorcee. Mind you, given his grandson’s moral suppleness, I s’pose that being a Crazy Catholic Peer in the Brideshead tradition is not out of the question.

Seriously though, this is shameful and disgusting act. You know it is bad when Bolt throws you under the bus. I would say that Monckton could not sink any lower, but I know that he would prove me wrong…

And Monckton is a friend/ally of Watts is he not? And didn’t Dick Lindzen also speak at the same “conference” as Monckton?

1. Identify opposing actions that you find offensive.
2. Immediately say something along the same lines, but even more offensive.
3. Back down, but cite and hence publicise the initial offensive action.

So we see in this case the recent public references to forcibly tattooing skeptics (Glover) or inviting them to gas themselves with CO (Singer), the obvious Nazi connections of which were ignored by the compliant eco-friendly MSM.

So Monckton deliberately gets publicly offensive, knowing that the lame lefties of the MSM press will faithfully report it, then he gets his shots in on Singer and Glover which the MSM is forced to record.

Plus, he increases the chance that some rabid eco-nuts will try to bust up his lecture tour, with the resultant bad publicity for Green wackodom.

And while you folks are sitting around discussing his Catholic beliefs and hereditary aristocracy, he’s way down the road planning something new.

Rick, dunno what this Glover business is, but Singer’s thing about carbon monoxide was pretty clearly a joke referencing the fact that deniers (eg Rep Joe Barton) regularly say things like ““CO2 is odorless, colorless, tasteless – it’s not a threat to human health in terms of being exposed to it. We create it as we talk back and forth.” – as if being odourless, colourless and tasteless somehow made it harmless. Still, despite the bias in your post, you’ve made an interesting point about Monckton’s tactics. Personally I don’t credit him with that much self-reflective strategic ability.

Strategic ability? You think? How about ‘Oh, goodness me, I really may have gone too far on this occasion and no one who wishes to maintain any scintilla of credibility can be seen to endorse me; I fear the end of the demi-respectable lecture-circuit Gravy Train may have just hoved into view!’?

Really Rick? Monckton lied about Garnaut being a nazi fifty minutes into a speech for an obscure American right-wing think-tank knowing it would explode in the Australian media so he would deliberately look like an ass and be repudiated by the main denialists just to teach everybody a lesson?

@James Haughton: Richard Glover is a journalist for the SMH who wrote earlier this month: “Surely it’s time for climate-change deniers to have their opinions forcibly tattooed on their bodies.”

As for Singer, yes, it might have been an example of typical Leftist humour — utterly mirthless and easy to see as a wish-fulfilment fantasy — but it’s too easy for Monckton to adopt it for his own purposes. Note for the next struggle meeting: Leftists shouldn’t try humour; they don’t have the necessary self-awareness.

@John: It worked, didn’t it?

Monckton is quite prepared to look like an ass to advance his agenda, which is to oppose what he sees as large philosophical visions, wealth redistribution agendas, and world governance goals, under the banner of environmentalism.

>Monckton is always entertaining and witty — another reason for Lefties to hate him, since they don’t get humour.
The videos of him giving the treatment to various assorted activists at Copenhagen are classics.

Please Rick. Explain to me the humour in calling young adults “Hitler Youth”. Obviously I don’t have a sense of humour and I would like you to explain how this is witty.

Yet another extraordinary denier performance from the realm-beyond-parody!

I’ve been thinking for a while that we probably need to get this remarkably un-self-aware, relentlessly simplistic, strident, monotonous, and above all utterly impervious behaviour located firmly where it belongs; somewhere on the Autism spectrum.

‘Libtard’ is unkind, and plenty of perfectly decent people have Aspergers. Can I suggest “Rand’s Syndrome” in honour of their collective hero? The mother of them all, as it were…

> Obviously I don’t have a sense of humour and I would like you to explain how this is witty.

I’m sorry, but you can’t acquire a sense of humour by having someone explain the joke to you. You either have one or you don’t.

According to psychologists, the lack of a sense of humour usually indicates excessive narcissism and feelings of self-importance, plus the terror of admitting the possibility of error, inadequacy and absurdity in ourselves.

Ah, I think I see where Rick Bradford is coming from! By Rick’s ‘logic’, if we don’t see Monckton’s swastika sign as humorous, it’s because we, ourselves, are actually closet fascists.

Note that this Rickbradfordian ‘logic’ only goes in one direction. If Monckton compares rhwombat to Hitler and rhwombat doesn’t find it funny, it means rhwombat lacks a sense of humour. If, on the other hand, rhwombat compares Monckton to Hitler and Monckton doesn’t find it funny, it … still means rhwombat lacks a sense of humour.

Actually bill, it’s not so much a form of autism, which has a fairly clear neuropathological basis, but more of an acquired attachment disorder. Most Denialists are Cons. Most Cons are insecure hierarchs, scared of Others, and dependent on patriarchy for their sense of value. The interesting thing is how these poor children react when confronted with the reality that Daddy is a demonstrably malignant monster with the moral authority of Dick Cheney- as has been demonstrated by recent troll infestations both here and on The Conversation. Right wing humour? Don’t make me laugh!